935104 - Error message "Draft cannot be saved" (esp. for AutoSave) should not be modal, but inline

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Susurrus]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20131023071247

Steps to reproduce:

Attemped to compose and send a new mail message in a separate compose window.


Actual results:

I was interrupted by the "Draft cannot be saved" dialog box. I was able to finishing composing my message and send it, but I was not expecting to be interrupted since I hadn't even asked for the draft to be saved.


Expected results:

The dialog for the "Draft cannot be saved" message should not have been modal and focus-stealing and instead been a passive alert at the top or bottom of the window, if shown to the user at all. I'm currently having problems saving drafts to my Sent folder, which I'm not sure of the cause, so I'm certain this situation wasn't thought of for handling with explicitly.

Basically, if I hadn't explicitly asked for the draft to be saved, and if I closed my compose window I'd be prompted anyways to save it, why was I interrupted when Thunderbird failed to auto-save it? It was jarring and needless to say the least. An argument could be made for the user not to be made aware of the failure at all, but I think the proper thing to do is alert the use with a non-modal dialog indicating saving failure and possibly tell the user there may be a bug or account configuration issue if this happens multiple times, as it has been doing with my account.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

> I'm currently having problems saving drafts to my Sent folder

do you mean, I'm currently having problems saving sent messages to my Sent folder?   Or, ... having problems saving drafts to my drafts folder?

Comment 2

[Susurrus]

That line referred to saving sent messages to my sent folder once they were sent. I could successfully send messages, but then once that was finished I'd get an error from Thunderbird indicating that it couldn't save the message in my Sent folder. I just hit cancel. I haven't had that problem in a while, though, but I don't know if that was a separate Thunderbird bug that was fixed.

This specific issue is merely about draft saving failures interrupting message composing.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

backend?

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, use Needinfo for questions) from comment #3)
> backend?

Hmm, no, this seems to be about the frontend UI experience only.
But SeaMonkey would probably want the same.
So it might be mailnews anyway. You'll know that better than me. :)